This invention is related to a row crop harvester having a rotary knife cutting mechanism and, more particularly, to a means for mounting a rotary knife thereon providing adjustments for properly positioning a knife against its cooperative cutting edge.
To obtain optimum cutting efficiency, it is desirable that the rotary cutting knife turn in a plane parallel to and closely spaced with its cooperative cutting edge, which might be a stationary blade or, as here, a second rotary knife. Since the cutting blades wear in use and since, in the manufacture of the row crop harvesting unit, it is not realistic to expect a fixed rotational mounting of the rotary blades to consistently achieve the desired parallalism, it becomes necessary to provide a means for adjusting the relative position of the blades. Others have taught a vertical adjustment of the rotary knife and a linear adjustment longitudinally of the divider frame, the latter being primarily to tension the knife drive means. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,940,913. Still others have provided a pair of rotating disk cutters wherein both cutters may be linearly adjusted vertically or longitudinally of the divider and, additionally, the cutting plane of one knife may be tilted about an axis longitudinal of the divider. This latter adjusting system still does not allow full adjustment since the cutting planes could be skewed about an axis transverse of the divider.